Historical revisionism is always in season and is generally a useful, or at least diverting, activity. But Nick Baumann’s effort, in Slate
last week, to resuscitate the strategic reputation of Neville
Chamberlain (British prime minister, 1937–40), on the 75th anniversary
of the Munich Agreement, was a bridge too far in historical myth-making.

It
is correct that Britain and France could not go to war to prevent
Germans in Czechoslovakia, especially concentrated in Sudetenland, from
becoming Germans in fact; and that, as a practical matter, this meant
conceding Sudetenland to Germany, as the Czechs could not deport a
million Germans without justifying and bringing down on themselves an
irresistible German invasion.

Baumann
breathlessly revealed what every even slightly informed person on the
subject already knew: that Britain and France had no ability to stop
Germany on the ground in Central Europe. Even at the end of World War
II, Britain had only 25 divisions engaged against Germany in Northwest
Europe and Italy (compared with 80 U.S. and 16 French and Canadian
combined). The British army (like all other armies) could defeat the
formidable Germans only when they had they had a heavy numerical and
armament advantage, as at El Alamein in Egypt in November 1942. No sane
person ever suggested that Czechoslovakia could be successfully defended
from Hitler militarily if he attacked it....